5
Some said that jail was like hell. They must’ve thought the devil a creature of lamentably small imagination. No, jail was more like . . . school. Unpleasant, but enlightening.
The choicest villains in the city won admission to Haideum Castle.
Halcyon Hall was the slop bucket that caught the leftovers.
It was a place of crooked lawyers, swindling bankers, and footmen who’d only been taking it for a polishing, honest, sir.
It housed a fine cross section of humanity, and there was an education to be had from all of them.
There were the rich hooligans remanded overnight after doing something inadvisable with a firework at the Carysium Club, whose cant and manners Myria studied like a science.
There were the accountants, who’d charted some commendably creative courses through the maze of Imperial Revenue.
There were the attorneys, those old schoolmasters, who’d advised on how to get away with every breed of crime, until they’d one day forgotten their own wisdom.
The servants were a special prize. Even in jail, they made a living out of airing their masters’ dirty laundry. The company was, in short, a pile of manure.
It was an excellent place for a seed to grow.
It pleased Myria, in a way, that three-year-long charade. She was in Halcyon Hall as an innocent woman, and not once did she lift the mask. The guards took her interest in the library for diligence, and her conversations with her fellow prisoners for peacemaking civility.
She was a good influence, and good influences were given certain privileges.
Odd privileges, like being permitted to scrub the floor of the wardens’ cloakroom, but it was better than being shut in her cell—especially when a coat sleeve somehow jammed the door and she could hear them talking through the crack.
It was almost a shame when they granted her early release.
It was only three months, but that was what came of being a saintly prat.
Either way, it’d been more than long enough to put the final polish on the plan.
By her last night, it was shining like a stolen diamond, and every facet of it pleased her.
Take his riches. Take his power. Take his life.
And so, the morning came. The warden handed back the gown in which she’d been arrested: a conservative white cotton affair, three years out of fashion. Myria dressed in her cell, set her hair with rusted pins, then surveyed her looks in the mirror.
A sorry sight, she thought, examining the thinned-out angles of her face. She looked like a prim little doll left in the attic for a decade. Still, she was neat as a button, given what she had to work with.
At the chime of eight, the key turned in her cell door for the last time. Her favorite guard walked her down the long brick corridors toward the light. She waved to the inmates on her way, and curtsied to the staff at the door. Then, she stepped into the watchhouse.
The room was almost empty at the early hour. A lone visitor sat in the waiting chair, half hidden behind his news scroll.
Almost there, she thought, keeping her smile under careful regulation. Beyond one last oak-and-iron door lay sunlight.
“Ah, Miss Rosara,” said the warden, opening the prison ledger. “Right on time. All your chattels released . . . Sign here.”
Myria scrawled down the imaginary lady’s name.
With a click of the warden’s fingers, blue threads flowed from his fingertips and spun into a sealing stamp.
Myria presented her left hand, and he pressed the stamp to the back of it.
Arcanic light spun once about her wrist in the outline of her restraining cuff. Then, with a soft sigh, it disappeared.
“You’re free to go,” he said. Myria curtsied and turned for the door.
Free, she thought blissfully. And about time too. Inside her, a little bird shuffled the snow off its back and unfurled its stiffened wings.
“Oh, one last matter,” the warden added. “The prefecture’s sent an assistant for your first week at liberty.”
Ah. The little bird froze at the scent of a fox.
“Sir?” she asked, turning on her toes.
“They lend a hand with the dominius cases, now and again,” he said. “’Specially when there’s memory damage involved. He’ll keep you on your feet until you’ve settled in.”
Will he, now? She’d had no shortage of grayside acquaintances who’d faked dominius pleas.
She recalled a few of them being saddled with guard dogs.
In theory, they were detectives—offering a helping hand, lulling their charges into a false sense of security, then catching them the moment they slipped back into their old ways.
In practice, they were bored junior prefects suppressing yawns and sneaking cigarettes.
“I see. How thoughtful,” Myria said sweetly. “Might I ask the gentleman’s name?”
The lone visitor came to his feet.
“Prefect Felix Aurelias,” he said with a shallow bow. “Good morning, Miss Rosara.”
Well, well, she thought, looking the man up and down. First class. Should’ve been arrested years ago, if they dish out chaps like that once you’ve finished.
He was handsome, in that bright and open way better suited to advertising banks than corrupting innocents.
Mostly Carinth, judging by the gold complexion and precise, proud features.
There was a touch of Isran in his eyes and hair, though, which were dark as emberyn.
He looked a proper gentleman, trim and whip smart in a prefecture-blue coat, without a scuff on his boots or a crease in his shirt.
But that neatness went beyond the demands of fashion, and his posture . . . He stood like someone had rammed a javelin up his spine. If he wasn’t a military man, she wasn’t a thieving disgrace. Then her gaze fell on his regimental pin, and her stomach plunged.
Arcani Corps.
Alarm bells tolled. They’d sent a trained arcani to watch her?
Donna Rosara had been an unwitting accessory to a jewelry theft.
To everyone but Marinus and a select few magisters, Myria Cadessa had died for her crimes .
. . but if the prefecture knew who she really was, this was all about to get a damn sight harder.
Then, against all reason, a smile flicked to her face. It didn’t matter. Carintheum had set a lion on her? The little bird could slip him soon enough.
“Good day, sir,” she said cheerfully. “Shall we go?”
Halcyon Hall was by no means in a reputable part of Carintheum.
Nonetheless, as Myria emerged into the sun, she beamed like a child released to the summer fair.
Spring light glistened through pale green leaves.
The wind was as warm and soft as the night she’d last breathed it as a free woman. As for the rest . . .
Well, it was pungent chaos. The streets reeked of horse manure and rotting oranges.
After three years smelling nothing but damp brick, though, it made the world feel real again.
A florist had run her cart into the dustman’s, where they blocked the traffic, exchanging pleasantries that made her fellow inmates seem like men of prim vocabulary.
Great flightless fanwings tossed through refuse in the gutter.
The air rattled with the din of drills tearing up the paving nearby—preparing to wire another building to the arcanic grid, no doubt.
All that pandemonium, and not a single warden charging in to stop them.
Ah, sweet liberty, she thought, raising her face to the sun.
A shame about the watchdog at her heel. Still, time to see what she was up against.
“Well, sir, I’m scarcely fit for civilization,” she said. “I’ve a mind to visit the Lumenia Street baths.”
“Ah. That’s . . .” The prefect hesitated, looking each way down the road.
Unfamiliar with the city. Curious. Not long back from the wars?
“This way, sir,” she said, then took his arm and started for the west. He didn’t seem to notice how her fingers moved on his sleeve.
No gauntlet underneath. An arcani skilled enough to work freehand? That squared with the phoenix token.
“Forgive me,” he said, with a slightly mechanical smile. “They’ve dug up half the city since I left.”
She stole another glance at him. He looked young—mid-twenties, perhaps. Powerful, but green. She could work with that.
“Ah. Just come back from the campaign in Hjelvak?” She gestured to his phoenix token. He looked down at it, then averted his gaze.
“Indeed. But you seem confident of your way,” he said, following her between a rank of parked phaetons. “I’d been told your memory was injured.”
Well, he’d avoided that question fair and square. Odd. It was usually hard to make those soldier boys stop rattling on about the conquests.
“Oh, it’s a fright,” she said with a sigh, “but I realized I’d have to know heads from tails when they released me. I found a map and memorized it.”
“I say. Did counting the bricks in your cell prove overstimulating?”
“Eleven hundred and two, sir.” She flashed him a quick sidelong smile, and to her surprise, he grinned. Bedevil her, he had a sense of humor. She was surprised they hadn’t rooted that out in the prefecture entrance examinations.
“I see. Do you recall much of your life before . . . ?” He left the question delicately hanging. Still, there was no suspicion in his gaze. Indeed, his eyes were darting every which way, barely settling on her at all. Bored, perhaps? Set to a task below his station?
“It’s a curious thing,” she said. “Give me a ball of wool, and I’d know how to knit. I can dance, do mathematics . . . I can even remember these places, now I see them. Little else, though. Little that matters.”
“Ah. Side effects of a badly cast dominius curse,” he said. Myria hid a smile. She’d rattled that off straight from a therical textbook.
“And, of course, it’ll serve as my excuse whenever I forget something for the next ten years to come,” she added. “A lady must take consolation where she can!”
She led the way across another street, winding between a crowd of laborers on their way to the morning shift.